Thursday, August 4, 2022
This photograph shows the village of Zhöl at the foot of the south wall of Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. The photograph was taken during a visit to Tibet in 1995, and is actually a photo of the original slide projected onto a wall a couple of evenings ago while I was going through pictures from my travels. I have left in the clipping in the top left so that most of Chagpori Hill can be seen. The Tibetan Medical Institute used to be on top of this hill, but was destroyed during the Chinese invasion in 1959.
I had known that Zhöl was under danger of having all its inhabitants moved out, but did not realize that this had happened. It turns out that in the summer of 1995,
the families residing in the village were evicted from their homes and resettled to the North of Lhasa. A number of buildings that were not deemed part of the monument at the time were demolished in the inner Shol while the additions comprising the outer Zhöl were razed.1
